Quote Originally Posted by zorro View Post
"Did you go there by plane?" Would that still be Ты туда летал?
Summing up what Bob and Doomer have said, note that Ты туда летал? has more than one possible answer:

Да, на самолёте. "Yes, [I flew] by airplane."
Нет, на вертолёте*. "No, [I flew] by helicopter."
Нет, я ездил на поезде. "No, [I went] by train."

So you could phrase the question as Ты туда летал? if the questioner wants to know whether the person traveled by air or by land or by water. If it's known that the traveler flew, but the questioner doesn't know whether it was in an airplane, helicopter, hot-air balloon, alien spacecraft, etc., then Ты туда летал на самолёте? would be the appropriate phrasing. You could even say Ты туда ездил на самолёте?, using the more generic verb for travelling-by-vehicle, instead of the verb "to fly".

* P.S. The root -верт- means "spin; rotate", by the way -- so a вертолёт is basically "a thing that flies by spinning", while самолёт is basically "a self-flying thing")